Project Management Assignment: Implementing Agile Approach In Shaka Employment

Question

Task: You are hired as a consultant to help Naledi build her case on Shaka Employment. Write a 1500 words report meeting the following brief:
1. Naledi is not well acquainted with project management and has asked you to recommend a project management approach out of the four she’s researched: Traditional, Agile, Lean, Iterative and Incremental. Evaluate and reason which project management strategy you would suggest for this project to Naledi.
2. Justify your recommendation and outline any disadvantages or risks she would be aware of in choosing the recommended approach.
3. Naledi also needs to explain to her team, and stakeholders the characteristics of projects and how running a project differs from business as usual.
4. As part of her report Naledi needs to justify hiring a project manager. Outline the benefits of having one, and the critical skills they could bring to the project, and how they might need to adapt their style to the recommended project management approach.
5. Finally, if Naledi hires you as a project manager, please outline how the risks identified in question 2 will affect the time-quality-cost triangle. If you have to compromise on one, which one would it be. Please justify your answer.

Answer

Introduction to the case of project management assignment
Shaka Employment has started to operate its business two years ago with its twenty numbers of employees, which helps people to find new jobs through the help of online websites of this organisation. The organisation already operates its business in India, South Africa and Australia; however, to get more profits from its operations and to expand its business, the organisation has taken the support of project management system. Through which, the organisation could be able to get the effective outcome like, expansion of profitability from its business operation. Also Shaka Employment has formed some organisational goals that will also help to its business expansion (Altahtooh and Emsley, 2017). Hence, the administrator of the organisation shows its interest to take the appropriate approach of project management to meet with its business goals and to accomplish its entire project management with efficiency. Thus, to leverage the intension of the efficient fulfilment of project management, the organisation explored in the context of project management assignment chose the Agile Project Management (APM) approach, which could positively effects the entire activities during the project management (Stoddard, Gillis and Cohn, 2019).

Figure 1: Agile Project Management Cycle
(Source: Stoddard, Gillis and Cohn, 2019)

1.Evaluation of Agile Project Management Approachand the Reason behind its Implementation
Throughout the year of 1970, W. Royce, present the project management approach of Agile, through which, an organisation can efficiently accomplish its entire activities of project management. Generally, agile is the project management strategy, which will focus on consistence development of services and products in organisationalfuture operations. Actually, the agile project management tool consists with twelve fundamental principles that will help to fetch some development in the process of project management. The principles are, consumer satisfaction, providing of competitive advantage to the consumers, delivery with high frequency, collaborate the stakeholders and developers, motivate the stakeholders to accomplish the project goals, face-to-face meetings, finalise the working product, maintain a sustainable development, simplicity, self-organised efficient team, and regular intervals (Nuottila, Aaltonen and Kujala, 2017). Throughout the impact of those principles Shaka Employment could get the efficiency in the project management process and in its accomplishments.

Fundamentally, the principles and the way of agile project management strategywill helpShaka Employment to enhance the productivity of the organisation, which will also helps to leave an effective brand image throughout its efficient operation. Through the implementation of agile project management strategy, the organisation will be able to satisfy its consumers through delivering effective products and services, and its entire stakeholders, who are involved in this project management process of ShakaEmployment.Furthermore, Scrum is also a management strategic part of agile project management method that will also help to mitigate the obstacle that could hamper the activities of project management (Azanhaet al., 2017). Therefore, it is stated in the project management assignmentthat Naledi, the CEO of Shaka Employmentshows its interest to implement the strategy of agile project managementto develop its future business operationthat will help to effectively complete the entire activity.

2. Identification and Analysis of the Risks
During the process of project management of Shaka Employment, the CEO of the organisationrealises to take the agile strategy, which will help the organisation in its starting of upcoming new activity of delivery products and services. Due to fundamental principles of this project management strategy, and the Scrum strategy of Agile project management, which will help to mitigate the expected obstacles during the project management period; through which,the organisation would be able to accomplish its project with getting effective result in the end (Nuottila, Aaltonen and Kujala, 2017). However, during the project management process, there could bestill some little bit of issues in formation of budget for the accomplishment of the entire project management.

Generally, an appropriate planning must important to start a project management to predict the approx. budget for the project.In the case ofShaka Employment examined herein project management assignment, the administrative department need to invest their money into its products and service delivery. However, during the project management process,due to the enhancement ofemployee payments, the project management elements cost, etc. the predicted cost of the project has gone over from its prediction to complete the process within a short time period than it selected at the beginning (Adafin, Rotimi and Wilkinson, 2020). This becomes as an obstacle in the accomplishment process of project management.

3. Evaluation of the Differences between a Business and Project Management
The CEO of Shaka Employment has been able to addresses that the agile project management methods would betaken into the fulfilment of current project to improve its delivery of product and services. Actually, stakeholders are the key partner of the organisation, and the knowledge about appropriate information of the current project is very essential to co-operate with the organisation. The efficient way consumer satisfaction, high quality product, fastest delivery, focus on collaboration, greater transparency, efficient communication will helpto increase the project value; through which the project manager couldpredict the upcoming profit from the business (Koi-Akrofi, Koi-Akrofi and Matey, 2019). Throughout the implementation of those features, the agile project management strategy will be helpfulto effectively accomplish the project through achieving the entire project goal, which will help to get more profits from its organisational operation.

Generally, a project has been hold to form an effective prediction about the future business operation of Shaka Employment. If the project will efficiently accomplish through the implementation of agile methodology, though the future business couldbe able to efficiently operate through pursuing the way of designed project.

4. Evaluate the Advantages and critically justify the skills and styles of the project management
4.1 What are the benefits of APM strategy discussed in the project management assignment?
Due to the adaptationand implementation of agile project management strategy, the current project of Shaka Employment will beefficiently benefited. Thus, the organisation will beable to develop its product quality; through which, it could satisfies its consumers through providing effective and good quality product and services (Cooper and Sommer, 2018). Moreover, through the adoption of this strategy the project manager willfocus on the activity of entire project with more efficiency. Due to the efficient effort for managing the project, the expected risks will have mitigated. Therefore, Shaka Employment couldbe able to increase its productivity 16% higher than its existing level, and due to this, the organisation can provide more fast service to its consumers.

Figure 2: Benefits of APM
(Source: Cooper and Sommer, 2018)

4.2 Justify the skills and styles that are required in Project Management Approach
The CEOof Shaka Employment needs the risk management strategy to control over the management of budget and needs more efficient predictability of project’s budget. Because of, the expected budget for the project has not beenover from its prediction; therefore, the organisation could hire the project manager, who has the sufficient experience to manage the entire process of project with implementing the agile project management strategy, neither the organisation could facewith some budget managementissues. Through which the organisational project management process will effectively be fulfilled.

5. Evaluation of the risk that hamper the time-quality-cost triangle and provide a justification in case of compromising one part of the triangle
5.1 Evaluation of the Effectiveness of Risk on Time-Quality-Cost Triangle of Project Management
Due to over flow of budget prediction, the project manager of Shaka Employment realises the upcoming hindrance during the project management period. Furthermore, due to the overflow of budget the project management process will have to stop in the mid-field of the process during the lacking of available investment. Therefore, considering the findings obtained in the project management assignment signifies that the project will have taken so much time to completion, and also the huge time process hampered the effort of the project manager during the accomplishment of it. Moreover, the high amount of affordable budget is very significant to enhance the quality of the project; however, due to the lacking of timely investment for budget overflow couldalso the hamper to reduce the quality of the project (SHAHID and RAMAKRISHNAIAH, 2019). Thus, the low quality of project management will hamper the business operation of Shaka Employment.Also, due to the overflow of predicted amount of budget for project management will be one of the reasons behind the enhancement of product and service cost in its business operation.

Figure 3: Time-Quality-Cost Triangle in Project Management
(Source: SHAHID and RAMAKRISHNAIAH, 2019)

5.2 Justification of the Compromising Part of Time-Quality-Cost Triangle
The project manager of Shaka Employment will takethe decision to provide more concentration on the quality management and the cost management of project than the management of time. Actually, time is also the significant perspective for proper managing, but little bit of less valuable than quality and cost of the project. In the other hand, the accomplishment of project within the appointed time will bevery significant to enhance the effectiveness of the project management (Delisle, 2019). However, in the case of Shaka Employment, the current project the project manager could befailed to effectively managethe cash overflow due to enhance the quality or scope and value of the project. Therefore, to maintain the high quality of project management process, the project manager could compromise its needed time through expanding the time period for the fulfilment of the entire activity of the project.

Conclusion
Throughout the entire evaluation done in this project management assignment, it is concluded that the project manager of Shaka Employment will chose the agile project management strategy to accomplish the project with more efficiency. During the adoption of agile strategy, it includes the scrum strategy also to mitigate the obstacles, which could hamper the fluent progress of project management process. Thus, the organisation couldaccomplish its new project to develop its delivery of products and services. However, due to the overflow of expected budget, the project management could behampered through expanding the selected time. Therefore, the organisation will has to adopt more valuable strategies and approaches that could positively effect in its future business operation.?

References
Adafin, J., Rotimi, J.O. and Wilkinson, S., 2020. Risk impact assessments in project budget development: quantity surveyors' perspectives. International Journal of Construction Management, 20(1), pp.13-28.

Altahtooh, U.A. and Emsley, M.W., 2017. An introduction to project end theory in project management. International Journal of Information Technology Project Management (IJITPM), 8(3), pp.69-81.

Azanha, A., Argoud, A.R.T.T., de Camargo Junior, J.B. and Antoniolli, P.D., 2017. Agile project management with Scrum. Project management assignmentInternational Journal of Managing Projects in Business.

Cooper, R.G. and Sommer, A.F., 2018. Agile–Stage-Gate for Manufacturers: Changing the Way New Products Are Developed Integrating Agile project management methods into a Stage-Gate system offers both opportunities and challenges. Research-Technology Management, 61(2), pp.17-26.

Delisle, J., 2019. Uncovering temporal underpinnings of project management standards. International Journal of Project Management, 37(8), pp.968-978.

Koi-Akrofi, G.Y., Koi-Akrofi, J. and Matey, H.A., 2019.UNDERSTANDING THE CHARACTERISTICS, BENEFITS AND CHALLENGES OF AGILE IT PROJECT MANAGEMENT: ALiterature BASED PERSPECTIVE.

International Journal of Software Engineering & Applications, 10(5), pp.25-44.

Nuottila, J., Aaltonen, K. and Kujala, J., 2017. Agile project management in a public context: case study on forms of organising. International Journal of Project Organisation and Management, 9(3), pp.230-248.

SHAHID, S. and RAMAKRISHNAIAH, A., 2019.Analysis of Critical Success Factors for Construction Projects in India.

Stoddard, M.M., Gillis, B. and Cohn, P., 2019. Agile project management in libraries: Creating collaborative, resilient, responsive organizations. Journal of Library Administration, 59(5), pp.492-511